Commander Coleman watched him for several silent seconds, for some reason, his face growing harder.
Did I do something wrong? Was I too honest?
Coda replayed his words in his head, trying to figure out how they had sounded to his audience. He cursed himself. There was no doubt about it, he had gone too far. The review board wouldn’t care about his father teaching him how to throw a baseball, and they wouldn’t like hearing Coda defend him.
Part of him wanted to backtrack and attempt to clarify what he had said. But what would he say? And how could he say it without sounding like he wasn’t trying to backpedal? The commander moved on to the next question before Coda figured it out.
When the strange interview finally ended, Commander Coleman dismissed Coda, remaining behind to provide his own statements. As Coda left the small room and returned to his barracks, he couldn’t tell if he’d helped his case or doomed the military careers of himself and everyone else in the squadron for good.
38
Hangar Deck, SAS Jamestown
Alpha Centauri System, Proxima B, High Orbit
A day later, Coda assembled with the rest of the Forgotten in the hangar bay for Whiskey’s funeral. A squadron of Nighthawks surrounded their group, providing them with an element of privacy from the rest of the ship’s personnel.
The ceremony itself was conducted in crisp military fashion. Because Whiskey was from the United States, her casket was draped with the stars and stripes of the American flag. An old bugle recording played over the speakers as her casket was loaded into one of the X-23 launch bays. Something about the scene, combined with the aftermath of uncovering his deep-seated emotions during his interview, made it difficult not to compare the proceedings to his father’s burial—or lack thereof.
For Lieutenant Joseph O’Neil, there had been no lamenting music. No tears. No gathered friends to say their final farewells. Not even a casket. He’d just been spaced out an air lock, where the frigid black and lack of pressure ravaged his traitorous body and did the fleet’s dirty work for them. The whole thing made him angry. Lieutenant O’Neil might have deserved that, but Coda and his mother hadn’t. They had deserved a chance to say goodbye. A chance to find closure.
Commander Coleman said a few words—more talk about how death was too often a pilot’s unwelcomed friend—then they gave Lieutenant Autumn “Whiskey” Jones her final salute and watched as her casket was launched from the tube into her final resting place.
Noodle blew out a breath as the proceedings concluded. “What now?”
It was a good question. The squadron was still grounded, and save for the gym and the simulator, there was little else to do.
“I’ve got just the thing,” Squawks said, giving Tex a knowing look. “Follow me.”
Squawks’s idea, it turned out, was to get well and truly drunk. How, exactly, Coda didn’t know at first, but Squawks led them to a secluded corner in a seldom-used parts locker where he and Tex, with the aid of a couple handy crewmen, had built a metal contraption that looked like little more than two buckets connected by a copper tube.
“What is that?” Coda asked, thoroughly confused.
“A still.”
“A what?”
“I thought your old man was in the military?” Squawks said. “It’s a still, Coda. You know, to make alcohol?”
“Oh,” Coda said, finally understanding what he was looking at. “What kind?”
“The kind that’ll get us messed up.”
“And hopefully not make us go blind,” Tex added.
“Blind?” Noodle asked, suddenly looking nervous.
“Yeah,” Tex said. “Bad alcohol can make you go blind.”
“Seriously?”
Tex erupted into laughter, his deep voice booming off the walls.
“Quiet, you dumb hick,” Squawks said. “If we get caught with this, going blind will be the last thing we have to worry about.” He grabbed the container that the metal hose emptied into and held it out to Coda, who reluctantly took it.
The container was nearly three-quarters full with a brown liquid. Coda sniffed the bottle’s contents and instantly regretted it. Pulling his head away in disgust, he held the container as far away as possible. “It smells like engine solvent.”
“That’s how you know it’s the good stuff,” Squawks said, taking the cup back. He took a sniff of it himself and smiled. “Oh yeah, definitely the good stuff.” He handed the cup to Tex. “You did most of the work. You do the honors.”
Tex held the cup to his nose and took in a long, slow breath before taking a sip. He immediately started coughing. It was a deep, raspy sound, as if his lungs were full of smoke, but even before he was finished, he was smiling. “Not bad,” he said between coughs then handed the cup to Noodle.
The slender pilot looked at the cup’s contents as if it were poison. “If this makes me go blind, I’m going to kick your ass.”
“You’ll have to find it first,” Squawks said.
Noodle shrugged at Coda then took a sip. Like Tex, he immediately began coughing, his face turning red. But also like Tex, he smiled, his eyes glassy. “This is terrible.” But that didn’t stop him from taking another, bigger sip before passing the cup to Coda.
“I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?” Coda asked.
“You know what the commander says,” Squawks said. “If you aren’t making mistakes, you aren’t trying new things. Well, try that.”
Coda sighed and brought the cup to his lips. The alcohol, whatever it was, may have smelled like engine solvent, but it tasted like pure rubbing alcohol, and it burned like liquid fire. In an instant, his entire midsection was warm, and his face felt flushed.
“There you go,” Squawks said like a proud parent. He took the cup from Coda then gave each of the four pilots a smaller cup and filled them with the alcohol. “All right. Let’s do this.”
They settled into a
